The Epistle to the Romans has been very extensively interpolated._(_113_)_ The original writing was addressed to Gentile readers. The interpolator, on the other hand, has in view readers “who occupy an Old Testament stand-point.” That is connected with the far-reaching development which began at Rome after the Neronian persecution. At that time, as is proved, Völter thinks, by the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistle of Barnabas, together with the first Epistle of Clement and the _Shepherd_ of Hermas, the Church at Rome “fell back upon a religious stand-point determined by Old Testament ideas.” It is this “reduction of Christianity to Jewish Old Testament religion, modified by Christianity,” that the interpolator is concerned to combat. In doing so he is forced to enter upon general speculations regarding the flesh, sin, and the law; in order “to defend the independence and superiority of Christianity” he develops an antinomianism, according to which the law had as its sole purpose, “by intensifying the misery of sin, to prepare men for deliverance from sin and the law, by the redemption which is in Jesus Christ.”_(_114_)_ Völter’s work is one of the adroitest performances in the whole field of Pauline study. It is not only that it represents what is in its own way a brilliant synthesis between Weisse and the radicals; its main significance [pg 146] lies in the fact that it breaks off the barren literary-critical logomachy, and directs attention once more to the subject-matter. Steck and van Manen had failed, once they went beyond the simple registration of inconcinnities in the text; Völter lets the theological problems have something to say for themselves. He observes more clearly than any one had stated it before exactly wherein the complexity of the question of the law consists, and rightly refers it to the fact that some passages take for granted its observance by the Jews as unquestionably right and proper, and only seek to maintain the freedom of the Gentiles in regard to it, whereas others reject it in principle, in such a way that Paul would be obliged to maintain also the emancipation of the Jews . . . if the rules of logical inference are to be applied. As it is, however, there is a want of congruence between the negative theory and the limitation of the practical demand. In an equally thoroughgoing fashion Völter deals with the problems of Christology and of the doctrine of the Spirit, and eschatology.